Over a year after Elon Musk first announced in his now famous “All Our Patent Are Belong To You” blog post that Tesla will be open-sourcing all its patents. We now have the first confirmation that some automakers have actually taken Tesla on the offer.

During an interview with Ron Baron last Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk very briefly mentioned for the first time that he believes companies are now using Tesla’s patents:

“I think actually there are a number of companies using our patents.”

Musk’s comment was in response to Baron asking why companies are not taking advantage of Tesla’s technology considering it is “free” and that the company is achieving higher safety and emission standard than the competition. expand full story